January 8, 2014 -- Labor Notes -- South
Korea’s railway workers have ended a 22-day strike, the longest such
stoppage in the country’s history. Though they didn’t win a clear
victory, they succeeded in placing the issue of privatisation in public
focus.

The government’s and management’s attack on the strike was ruthless
to the point of recklessness, while the public’s solidarity and sympathy
with the striking workers continued to rise.

And the full impact of the action has yet to ripple out. Amid rising
political tensions, the country’s biggest union umbrella, the
700,000-strong Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), has called
for a one-day general strike February 25.

Privatisation Plans Sparked Strike

About 15,000 unionists, or about 45 per cent of the workforce, of
Korea Railroad Corporation (Korail) walked off the job December 9 to protest
what they saw as a preliminary step to privatising rail service—a plan
by management to spin off the most lucrative slice of its business.

Chris
Strafford: With the release of documents from the Cabinet
Office and Prime Minister’s Office from 1984 detailing discussions and
actions of the Thatcher government in the 1984-85 miners’ strike we have got
some insight into how the attack on the miners was carried out. What
were your initial thoughts once you had finished reading the documents?

North Carolinians mobilised against an anti-worker (and anti-woman, anti-civil rights) legislative assault by bringing thousands of protesters to the state capitol every week for “Moral Mondays”, with close to a thousand arrests. Photo by Ajamu Dillahunt.

By Jenny Brown

December 30, 2013 -- Labor Notes -- Lean
meanness stalked workplaces. The political and economic outlook
continued dismal. But the year was marked by workers trying new things
and setting higher standards, for their employers, their unions, and—in
the case of low-wage workers—their pay.

Unemployment ticked down slightly, but the jobs created paid worse
than ever. Mainstream media reported with amazement that jobs that once
paid the bills, from bank teller to university instructor, now require
food stamps and Medicaid to supplement the wages of those who work every
day.

California Walmart worker Anthony Goytia spoke for many when he said it’s no longer pay cheque to pay cheque for him and his co-workers, but payday loan to payday loan.

November 27, 2013 -- Labor Notes -- More than 30 years since China opened up to foreign investment, wildcat strikes surge month
after month. They are driven by workers with no meaningful access to
union representation, to a worker centre, to the media, to legal
mechanisms, or to government intervention on their behalf. And yet
workers in industries from electronics to health care continue to
strike, impelled by low wages as low as US$2 an hour.

This raw resistance has generally gotten employers to give in to
strikers’ economic demands. The typical wage is minimum wage, but
overtime and the mandatory social insurances are often not properly
paid, so workers’ demands are frequently just to get their legal due,
which employers can easily meet.

October 10, 2013 -- Life of the Left, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission − On October 7, Bolivia's President Evo Morales issued a government
decree that allows workers to establish “social enterprises” in
businesses that are bankrupt, winding up, unjustifiably closed or
abandoned. These enterprises, while private, will be operated by the
workers and qualify for government assistance.

Morales issued Supreme Decree 1754 at a ceremony in the presidential palace marking the 62nd
anniversary of the founding of the Confederación General de
Trabajadores Fabriles de Bolivia (CGTFB – the General Confederation of
Industrial Workers of Bolivia). Minister of Labour Daniel Santalla
said the decree was issued pursuant to article 54 of Bolivia’s new constitution, which states that workers

in defense
of their workplaces and protection of the social interest may, in
accordance with the law, reactivate and reorganize firms that are
undergoing bankrupty, creditor proceedings or liquidation, or closed or
abandoned without justification, and may form communitarian or social
enterprises. The state will contribute to the action of the workers.

On September 30, after an earlier mass meeting of the cross-union Teachers’ Assembly voted to stay out, the strike
entered its third week.

The day
before, the Balearic Islands saw their biggest ever demonstrations, when at
least 100,000 came out to support the teachers and to protest against the education and language
policy of the regional People’s Party (PP) government of Jose Ramon Bauzá and
his education minister Joana Maria Camps.

September 25, 2013 -- New Politics, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- Since school began again on August 19, tens of thousands of teachers
have been engaged in strikes and demonstrations throughout
Mexico—including seizing public buildings, highway toll booths and
border crossing stations, occupying public buildings and city plazas,
and blocking foreign embassies—actions taken against the Education
Reform Law and the new Professional Teaching Law and over local demands
linked to wages and working conditions. While these are traditional
tactics, these are the largest and most militant teachers’ union
demonstrations in Mexican history.

Billionaire sweatshop sponger Bruce Rockowitz's CEO in October 2011 Rockowitz married
Hong Kong pop star Coco Lee in a ceremony that reportedly cost $20
million. The company he manages had a combined net worth of $6.2 billion in 2012.

By David L. Wilson

September 19, 2013 -- Climate & Capitalism -- Consumers are ultimately the ones responsible for dangerous
conditions in garment assembly plants in the global South, Hong
Kong-based business executive Bruce Rockowitz told the New York Times recently.
The problem is that improved safety would raise the price of clothing,
according to Rockowitz, who heads Li & Fung Limited, a sourcing
company that hooks up retailers like Macy’s and Kohl’s with suppliers in
low-wage countries like Bangladesh. ”So far”, he said, “consumers have
just not been willing to accept higher costs”.

“Ex-Midrand Council Workers in Dispute Since 1994! Dismissed for fighting corruption in 1994 and still fighting today! 20 years of Sacrifice! 20 Years of Poverty! 20 Years of Solidarity!” -- ex-Midrand Council workers' banner

September 13, 2013 -- Mikemarqusee.com, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- South Africa’s ex-Midrand Council workers are engaged in what is
surely the world’s longest running industrial dispute, a Burston for our
times. It started back in 1994, in the
midst of the birth pains of South African democracy, when more than 500
workers employed by Midrand Council took industrial action against
corrupt employment practices.

At that time, local government structures
had not yet been subject to democratic "transformation"; they were still
the creations of the apartheid era. Midrand was run by remnants of the
old regime with no interest in reaching a settlement. Under pressure,
some strikers returned to work, but the great majority remained in
dispute.

produce
fall-apart products that poison our children and grandchildren, and

have
less time to enjoy life?

People
are losing their jobs and homes. Many throughout the world are without food,
medical care and transportation. Instead of addressing real needs, governments
and international financial institutions are designing “austerity programs”
that cut back on basic services and privatise everything from education and
mail delivery to pension plans and public health.

Simultaneously,
climate change intensifies before our eyes as summers warm, droughts expand,
polar ice caps melt, and those who live in coastal areas are threatened by
rising waters. This occurs amid heightened use of radioactive and other toxic
chemicals, the destruction of biodiversity and a drive to pull the last resources
out of the Earth so that nothing will be left to future generations.

By activists of the Zashchita union, Moscow, translated by Renfrey Clarke

July 21, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
-- The Metrovagonmash factory has begun producing large numbers of railway wagons
with defective braking systems. In June, after three serious incidents on the
Moscow Metro, the factory was fined 6 million rubles. The trade union Zashchita
(“Defence”) has brought a suit in the prosecutor’s office, anticipates the laying
of criminal charges against the factory directors, and is beginning a protest
campaign.

The factory management
and the workshop chiefs are forcing workers to fit defective components despite
breaches of technical standards and serious faults in the parts involved. Plant
employees are concerned for the reputation of its products and for the safety
of Metro passengers. But workers who refuse to install the parts, demanding
that quality standards for the factory’s products be adhered to and normal
working conditions observed, are being subjected to reprisals and threatened
with the sack by Metrovagonmash chiefs.

Every time the annual South African season of wage negotiations is about to begin, as
it is now, representatives of capital unleash a tsunami of propaganda
about workers’ "high and unaffordable" wage demands. Dire warnings of
destructive social unrest/conflict, high inflation rates, poor
competitiveness and generalised economic devastation roll off their
silver-lined tongues. The underlying message is neither subtle nor
sanguine: wage demands of workers are to blame for just about
everything bad that is happening in our society.

Workers and
protesters holding a defaced portrait of Hong Kong billionaire Li
Ka-shing march on May Day, May 1, 2013. Thousands of workers,
local labour rights groups, socialists and striking dockworkers joined in. The Hong Kong Confederation
of Trade Unions said a record 5000 people took part in its march from
Victoria Park to government headquarters before ending near
tycoon Li Ka-shing’s Cheung Kong Center.

By Ellen David Friedman

May 7, 2013 -- Labor Notes -- The 40-day strike of more than 500 dockworkers
at the Port of Hong Kong ended on May 6 with a settlement that
included a 9.8 per cent wage increase, non-retaliation against strikers
and a written agreement, all of which had been fiercely resisted by the
four contractors targeted in the strike.

Their energy is palpable. “It’s like—the things we’ve suppressed for
10, 20 years, it’s all blowing up now”, one worker says (at 3:59 in video above). He
points to a co-worker seriously. “Look at his face. He’s done 24. That’s
what a 24 looks like.” Then he cracks a smile. “Actually, you know, he used to be pretty [bleep] good-looking—at least if you shave that beard!”

Striking Hong Kong dockworkers and supporters march at the world's third-busiest port. The two-week-old strike has bottlenecked cargo and gained enormous public sympathy. Photo: Left 21.

By the Union of Hong Kong Dockers

April 9, 2013 -- Text via ESSF -- Hundred members of the Union of Hong Kong Dockers (UHKD) are striking
to demand pay rise while their wages have not risen in the past 15
years. Moreover they are also fighting for the collective bargaining
right to negotiate with the management.

We ask you to send
protest letters to the Hong Kong International Terminals (HIT) as well
as its parent companies Hutchison Port Holdings Trust (HPHT), Hutchison
Whampoa Ltd (HWL) and the Hong Kong SAR government to support the
dockers.

For this purpose we attach a template which you can adapt and
send, with a copy to the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (hkctu@hkctu.org.hk).

Two workers of the 1000-member TRADOC cooperative. The hiring of women in the plant was one
of the many gains of worker ownership. Photo by Bob Briggs.

By Jane Slaughter

April 3, 2013 -- Labor Notes -- A tyre is not just a piece of rubber with a hole in it. I learned
this when I visited the workers’ cooperative that makes Cooper tyres in
El Salto, Mexico. A tyre is a sophisticated product that comes about
through a chain of chemical processes, lots of machine pounding, and
still the intervention of human hands.

A fervent inspection worker pointed out that every single tyre is
tested under road-like conditions, “If not, it could kill people”, he
noted. And, he added practically, “keeping the tyres safe saves our
jobs”.

European migrants to Australia aboard the ship SS Derna on their arrival in Melbourne in November 1948.

February 22, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Below are two chapters from Australian socialist Douglas Jordon's thesis on the Communist Party of Australia. They deal with the CPA's sometimes inconsistent attitude to migration and racism within the Australian working class. As such issues continue to feature heavily in Australian politics and trade union activity, something the left must always deal with, these chapters provide useful lessons and experiences for socialists today. The chapters are availabe for download as PDF files or can be read on screen below the introduction.

Douglas Jordan was politicised in England in the late 1960s. After
arriving in Australia he joined the Socialist Youth Alliance/Socialist
Workers League/Socialist Workers Party, in which where he remained a
member for 14 years. Today he is a community activist and co-presenter
of the City Limits radio program on Melbourne's 3CR.